The style of this portrait is known as the Hellenistic, Blind Type. This portrait is known in at least 22 copies; among the two better quality versions being in the MFA Boston and the British Museum.

Though shown here blind, there is in fact little or no evidence that he was sightless, it being a long-held convention that the best poets were blind, allowing them to see beyond reality. It also served to emphasise the traditional oral roots of Homeric poetry.

The expression is abstracted, as if inspired. It is an ‘invented portrait,’ an imaginary Homer, realistically rendered in the developed style of the Hellenistic age, presumably of the second century BC, contemporary with the Pergamene altar, the Laokoon and the Pseudo-Seneca portrait.

This sculpture is smaller than the well-known examples which tend to be carved as life, or over-life-sized, herm busts; this version could have been from a full sculpture and depicting the Bard as either seated or standing and perhaps was created for a library or some internal setting.